DR. OLA OREKUNRIN

Africa's high-flying doctor

Country: Nigeria

Sector: Medical Emergency Services

Dr. Ola Orekunrin is a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She's dedicated to bringing trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa and her company, an air ambulance service based in Lagos, is doing just that. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of their being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Ola graduated as a medical doctor from the University Of York in the UK and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine.

Ola currently resides in Lagos, Nigeria where she is considered a national expert of disaster medicine and pre-hospital care. Her company has been featured on various local TV and radio stations as well as the BBC and CNN.

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Ola's Startup Story

Ola Orekunrin’s startup story is truly remarkable. She was originally born in London and grew up in a foster home with her sister in the small seaside town of Lowestoft in the south-east of England. With a passion for medicine, she studied at the University of York in the UK, graduating at the incredibly young age of 21 as a qualified doctor. Her meteoric rise in the field of medical studies took her to Japan as a result of her being awarded the MEXT Japanese Government Scholarship. There, she conducted clinic research in the field of regenerative medicine at the Jikei University Hospital. However, the catalyst for a major life and career decision came when her sister became very, very ill on holiday whilst staying with relatives in Nigeria. The local hospital was unable to manage her sickle cell anemia condition, and as a result, Ola and her family started to search for an air ambulance so that she could be safely transported to a suitable medical facility in the country. The tragedy for the family was that there were no air ambulances to be found, even though the search took them from Nigeria, to Ghana, Sierra Leone and Cameroon, and across West Africa. The only one to be found was in South Africa, 5 hours away, but by the time the logistics had been arranged, Ola’s sister had died of her condition....

On any level, Ola Orekunrin is an inspirational Lioness of Africa, making not just a difference to the lives of patients in Nigeria, but across Africa and the globe through her example. She is a successful woman entrepreneur and inspirational leader in a world that needs more like her. --- Melanie Hawken, LoA founder and editor-in-chief

"Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s smallest number of motorized vehicles but the highest rate of road traffic fatalities, with Nigeria and South Africa leading the pack. Trauma has become a silent epidemic in Africa, an epidemic that will only spread as the economy grows. More and more Africans are buying cars and working in heavy and dangerous industries. At the same time, infrastructure is poor, safety laws lax, and cars badly maintained."

"... we take pride in being the first Nigerian indigenous company to do this...We are training more people to go into the air ambulance sector and I think our paramedics now have a huge amount of management skills. I just think that we need to start thinking outside the box and be more confident in the concept of African innovation."

"We have a mixed-pool of more than 20 aircraft that we use for different types of evacuation, and about 30 staff all employed in different capacities with us and branches in three major cities in Nigeria."

Featured

Flying Doctors Nigeria, founded by Dr. Ola Orekunrin, have been recognised by this year's Consumersng Awards for being one of the top 20 brands in Nigeria adopting high tech innovations in delivering services to people. Flying Doctors Nigeria, a medical emergency service that specializes in air ambulances, and other remote site medical solutions services, won the health start-ups category.

Fascinating though piece by Dr. Ola Orekunrin: "The term "hacking” means modifying the features of a system to achieve a new goal. In development, it can describe rapid changes made by a society to advance without going through the intermediate stages. Rather than following developed nations’ roadmap to progress, Africa can leapfrog by experimenting with emerging tools, models and ideas. Foreign investors looking at Africa often say that while the prospects are exciting, the infrastructure is lagging. I believe that existing infrastructure can be hacked – which in itself is a huge opportunity"....

While the idea of flying doctors and air ambulances in East Africa is almost taken for granted, in West Africa the concept has only just taken off thanks to the work of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and Dr Ola Orekunrin, who Stephen Williams met with recently to find out more about her life in the air...

Dr Ola Orekunrin is a UK-trained physician with a specialist interest in trauma and pre-hospital care. Upon graduation from the Hull York Medical School in England, as one of the youngest doctors in the UK at the time, Dr. Ola, as she is fondly called, worked for nearly ten years in the National Health Service (NHS) UK before coming back to Nigeria to pursue her dream.

Entrepreneur Advice

Learn from Ola's entrepreneur playbook

Getting your business funded can be tough....

"It’s the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, without a doubt. Now my company is actually running I can laugh at all the times I spent carrying my laptop around sourcing for funding and coming home in tears."

- Dr. Ola Orekunrinis a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She's dedicated to bringing trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa and her company, an air ambulance service based in Lagos, is doing just that. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of there being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Ola graduated as a medical doctor from the University Of York in the UK and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine.

Videos

Dr. Ola Orekunrin is an inspirational social entrepreneur, medical doctor, and trainee helicopter pilot who founded West Africa’s first air ambulance service, Flying Doctors Nigeria, which saves hundreds of lives across the region every year. Watch this fascinating TEDx Berlin presentation by Ola on the strength of women in business and "Womenomics".

British-Nigerian doctor Ola Orekunrin may be only 28, but she’s already founded Nigeria’s first emergency air ambulance service. Flying Doctors has become an essential service, airlifting patients from remote areas to hospitals, and providing care en route. It has helped hundreds of patients, particularly employees in the country’s oil and gas sector, who are among Flying Doctors’ top clients.

Diamond Women selected Dr. Ola Orekunrin as the Diamond Woman of the month for October. Dr. Ola Orekunrin is the founder of The Flying Doctors Nigeria, a leading air ambulance service in Nigeria. Here she discusses among other things her views on the latest Ebola crisis impacting West Africa.

HOTM profiles doctor, pilot and healthcare entrepreneur Dr. Ola Orekunrin. She is the CEO of Flying Doctors, a medical emergency unit which has helped save lives through prompt emergency response and air transportation of patients across the West African sub-region. Ola shares her story about returning to Nigeria to start a business and how she has been transformed by the experience.

Quotes

Be inspired by Ola's words

“I believe that the solutions to development in Africa lie in the minds of Africans. Particularly African entrepreneurs. An important part of Africa’s future lies in our ability to take Western ideas and adapt them to Africa.”

"True success is about a passion to create a better world, live a life that you can look back on and be truly proud of."

"Your background does not determine your destiny."

- Dr. Ola Orekunrin is a physician, helicopter pilot and entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of there being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Flying Doctors Nigeria today provides just such urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services in Nigeria and other countries across West Africa. Ola graduated from the University Of York in Britain and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine and holds their board certification.

"Governments simply must take health seriously if they wish to sustain and advance socioeconomic outcomes. Empirically, high levels of population health go hand-in-hand with high levels of growth and income."

- Dr. Ola Orekunrin is a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She's dedicated to bringing trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa and her company, an air ambulance service based in Lagos, is doing just that. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of there being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Ola graduated as a medical doctor from the University Of York in the UK and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine.

"We have to stop this habit of trying to aspire to whatever is in the West, a copy and paste model that doesn't fit into our situation in Africa."

- Dr. Ola Orekunrin is a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She's dedicated to bringing trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa and her company, an air ambulance service based in Lagos, is doing just that. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of their being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Ola graduated as a medical doctor from the University Of York in the UK and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine.

"Eighty percent of the world trauma occurs in low-middle income countries just like Nigeria...I feel there should be more focus on the trauma epidemic that Africa currently faces."

- Dr. Ola Orekunrin is a medical doctor, helicopter pilot and the healthcare entrepreneur founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, West Africa’s first Air Ambulance Service. She's dedicated to bringing trauma care to the most remote parts of Western Africa and her company, an air ambulance service based in Lagos, is doing just that. She was motivated to start the company after her younger sister tragically died whilst traveling in Nigeria as a consequence of their being no medical air service available to transport her to hospital. Ola graduated as a medical doctor from the University Of York in the UK and is a member of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine.